SAP makes strong cloud entry

THE adage, if you can't beat them, then join them, applies as much to technology as it does to anything else. Established enterprise software giants, whose business models revolve around selling packaged software to companies at high margins, are aggressively moving into the cloud and in the process carving out new business models.

German enterprise software company SAP is a good example. With its traditional business model under challenge, the firm has tweaked its portfolio so that it can seamlessly move into the cloud. It is doing this using its hugely successful Hana platform, which is an in-memory database and analytics tool.

And not a moment too soon. The rise of cloud computing, particularly the SaaS (software-as-a-service) model, popularised by companies such as Salesforce, Amazon Web Services and Google, has disrupted the traditional way that companies buy and use software. This has impacted the incumbents in the industry.